Friday, April 24, 2009

Against the Odds

As the last tendrils of the warp stream slipped away from the hull of my Vexor, sensors registered a fleet of 5 frigates. Further examination revealed that it was composed of an Incursus, Punisher, Merlin, and two Inquisitors.

Moments later, they all entered the stargate into Dantumi. I immediately gave chase, they proceeded onto Mara, where we played a game of cat and mouse in the asteroid belts. Then they went to Passari. As my frustration at not being able to get a point on one of them mounted, I goaded some of them in private channels. That failed too.

We were playing cat in mouse in Passari, with a great multitude of reds in local. Time and again, I warped into a belt to only see them warp away at 100k.

But then I noticed a pattern in their movements and warped in right on top of them.

Alarms blared as the enemy fleet materialized all around me, too close for comfort with my speed tank... but a pirate never runs!

I immediately began resolving locks, and let my drones go out to play. But the enemy were already warping away. I counted the seconds for the locks to resolve, slowly ticking by as one target at a time warped away.

Lock resolved. Point acquired.

I sent my drones to the now solo Merlin frigate. In short order, it died in a fiery explosion.

But then his buddies began to arrive in force, they were all too close to me, there was no way for my cruiser to outrun the nimble frigates. I began to resolve locks once again and threw out my drones at the first targets.

My untanked armor was already beginning to crumple, I could feel the shuddering of my ship beneath my feet. The Hobgoblin II's reached an Inquisitor, whose shields were obliterated.. but his armor took a bit longer before finally giving out and imploding.

Now, some of the native rats were shooting at me too, my hull was taking direct damage. Ironcially, my hull was also the best tanked part of the Vexor, thanks to a DCU II.

The Hobgoblin II's reached the enemy Incursus which, under their unwelcome attentions, quickly yielded to open space.

My hull was almost critical now, there remained only the enemy punisher. The Hobgoblin II's finally reached it, but it seemed to be a particularly hard nut to crack. The drones fired salvo after salvo at the little ship, while mine was already disintigrating beneath me.

Suddenly, the Punisher imploded in a fiery explosion. This last enemy pod was able to escape, the others left while I was too busy killing their allies. At any rate, my structural integrity was only 48%, there was little point in staying around risking another fight.

As I initiated docking procedures, I announced a new name for the now battle scarred Vexor, which was still venting atmosphere into space. Previously, it had been named 'II' for it's prior two kills in battle. Now, it would henceforth be known as 'VI' for it's kills.